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Episode 592: Listener Emails (The Holiday Edition)
Date December 24, 2014 Summary Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the Hall of Fame, the best baseball gifts, GM track records, and more. Topics * Ben and Sam's favorite players with similar names * GM track records * Beating the shift with bunts * Best baseball gifts * Favorite Jeff Sullivan tweets * Career longevity and aging curves * Hall of Fame hypothetical - player maximum * Favorite types of trades Intro Roger Maris commercial sound clip Outro Episode outtake sound clip Email Questions * Kyle: "This isn't very technically or even terribly basebally but it could be kind of fun. Who are your favorite or least favorite players that have your name in their name? Mine is Kyle Farnsworth because he reminds me of Fonzworth Bentley, the guy with the umbrella who used to dance in music videos in the early 2000s. Least favorite has to be Kyle Kendrick because I'm a bitter Phillies fan. Keep in mind that they don't have to have exactly the same name." * Andrew: "My question is about GMs and the benefit of the doubt. The recent moves of the Oakland A's I feel have people who don't understand the moves in one or two camps. There's 'Billy Beane is a wizard so he must know something we don't' or 'if Kevin Towers we'd all be ridiculing them'. My question is this: can a GM ever reach a point where he has earned the benefit of the doubt or is the past success of moves irrelevant when evaluating a front office decision? Is this a question of what makes good writing ie giving a GM the benefit of the doubt makes for a boring, uninteresting column?" * Mike (Philadelphia, PA): "With an increase in teams employing shifts I have noticed players trying to beat the shift by bunting down the third base line. If the bunting trend continues could you see teams employing a super shift where the left fielder would come down to cover third in case of a bunt? Or would teams be too afraid to leave such a gaping hole in left field that they would rather the player get on via the bunt?" * Brandon (Chicago, IL): "What's the best baseball related holiday present you've ever received?" * Eric: "What is Jeff Sullivan's greatest tweet?" * Mike (St. Louis, MO): "Would the Hall of Fame be improved if there was a cap on the number of players? There are currently 246 so maybe go up to 250. Would older and lesser known player start being eliminated first then each year there could be an additional debate on who should go as current players are voted in?" * Eric: "Which kind of trade do you prefer: trades where both teams seem to benefit (the win-win trade) or where one gets swindled (the win-lose trade)." Play Index * Sam used the Play Index to look up information about career longevity. * Approximately 16,000 players have played in the majors. * 74% of MLB players play at least two seasons. * 80% of players who play two seasons will play a third. * 86% of players who play seven seasons will play an eighth. * 62% of players who play 19 years will play a 20th season. * There was a significant drop in players in their 10th season during 2004 as a result of the 1994 strike. Notes * Sam says Bill Mueller is his favorite player with a similar sounding name. Ben says Jose Molina, whose middle name is Benjamin. * In answering Andrew's question, Sam says, "I'm gonna talk about Serial for a minute. I don't believe that there is a plausible answer to Serial. Like, there is no, when people say 'Oh what do you think happened who do you think did it', well I don't think anybody did it. None of the possibilities that they have offered seem to me 50% or greater and therefore all of them are unlikely and therefore none of them could be, I cannot put my weight behind either of them. So I'm stuck having to go after a plurality that I don't believe in. So then I start using the Bill James model more or less of solving crime where I assign guilt values to various things and of all the things that we know about this case it seems to me that the most convincing evidence that we have is that a guy was convicted and that is not 100%, that's not even 50%, however it is more evidence than we have for anything else." * In Episode 477 Ben and Sam discussed when a GM deserves to be fired and how to assign fault to a GM. * Sam was excited to be gifted an All-Star jacket for the league he played in as a kid. His first subscription to Baseball Prospectus was also a gift. Ben's girlfriend gave him a poster print that has outlines of all the MLB stadiums. * Sam prefers win-lose trades, "Love a good swindle." Ben agrees. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 592: Listener Emails (The Holiday Edition) Category:Email Episodes Category:Episodes